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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Twitter: Growing Fast, Not For Sale

Twitter is really hot, and that was evident from a discussion with company founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone that served as the opening discussion at the D7 conference. It seemed like most of the audience used Twitter, but there are still lots of questions about where the company is going and how it will make money. Williams and Stone said they were clearly focused on building the company and running it for many years to come.

Host Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal talked about while some studies show that most people who sign up for Twitter don't use it even once a month, 14% of Americans were using it and 19% of those were using it more than once a day.

Williams and Stone gave some history of the company. Williams talked about how he had sold Blogger to Google and started working with Biz there; then left to start Odio and later Stone joined him them. Later, they thought about the idea of just seeing status updates from their closest friends and seeing updates via SMS. Stone and several others started a prototype of Twitter; they used it over a weekend and it became obvious people liked it. That led to the starting of Twitter as a company (initially without Williams, who later closed Odio and then joined.)

Williams said the company now has 43 employees, and that's doubled since January. But they said the product didn't start growing until nine months after it came out.

It seemed like most of the audience used Twitter, but most used other apps for posting. Stone said at least twice as much traffic came from applications versus the Twitter web sites. Williams said that it was "fabulous for us and for users" that applications.

Asked about "real-time search," Williams talked about how that means different things to different people. What Twitter is doing with search is different and better ways of filtering the content that is in Twitter.

A lot of the discussion was on monetizing Twitter, and Mossberg showed research from Twitter users that said 30 percent of people said they thought banner advertising would be ok. Williams said he thought banner advertising was not offensive, but not particularly interesting; Stone said not to focus so much on the Twitter site but on the whole infrastructure.

In the study, 24 percent said they would be open to paid, professional versions of Twitter; Williams said that was a good idea, giving tools to marketers, such as authentication - making sure the brand was really behind the tweets.

We're 1% in the way towards building out Twitter, said Williams. Stone noted that the site has a lot of hype, and that can't last.

Stone and Williams said they pictured themselves running Twitter five years from now; and building a company out. "It's surprising to me," said Williams, who said he didn't realize that would be the case when Twitter was started.

He said the company wasn't for sale, and that the board and venture capitalists behind the company were in agreement on that.

For now, Williams said, the company is focused on improving the user experience, broadening the product, deepening the products, and building the business.

In response to a question, Stone said he thought the big opportunity would be in something they hadn't thought about yet.

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